A comparative study of two concepts Fatalism and Free will with Emphasis on Rumi and Attar Poems

The two concepts of Fatalism and Free will are the most important concepts raised in jurisprudence, philosophy and mystical literature which apart from philosophers, great poets such as Rumi, Sanai, Attar, Hafez, and Saadi have addressed it in their poetry and prose works.This issue becomes more important when in the history of Islam, two schools of Ash'ariyya and Mu'tazila have been established to defend Fatalism and Free will and have put forward numerous arguments to accept or reject them. This article with the purpose of comparative analysis of the two concepts of Fatalism and Free will with emphasis on the poems of Rumi and Attar. The main question of this article is: "How the two concepts of Fatalism and Free will can be analyzed in the poems of Rumi and Attar?" The hypothesis of the authors implies that the concepts of Fatalism and Free will have a special prominence in the poems of Rumi and Attar and that both poets have addressed these two concepts and have tried to analyze them with their own reasons. The findings by using the comparative method showed that the frequency of the concept of Free will in Rumi's poets is much higher than the concept of Fatalism while the frequency of Fatalism in Attar's poets is much wider than the concept of Free will. Therefore, in the course of mysticism, Rumi's poems represent voluntarism and Attar's poems represent Fatalism.